Reviews

About This Game

Frozen Synapse is the ultimate tactical game on PC and Mac.
It brings the simultaneous turn-based strategy genre bang up-to-date and lets you give detailed, accurate orders to your squad: classic gameplay with a modern interface.
Plan your moves, test them out, then hit the "Prime" button: both you and your enemy's turns are executed simultaneously.
Competitive-but-intuitive multiplayer and a huge single player campaign mean that Frozen Synapse will give you hours and hours of tactical delight.

It's a shame when people have only AAA games in their mind and ignore hidden gems such as Frozen Synapse. The game is not for anyone - that can be said about any game out there. But in this case what I mean is that unlike other games where you just rush and kill everything in sight, in Frozen Synapse you must take a slower and more tactical approach. You are in command of a squad of soldiers, each equipped with different weapons, from shotguns through sniper rifles all the way to rocket launchers. The game has a good tutorial which can make a person understand the basic and more advanced tactics - from the standard take cover tactics to the more advanced search and destroy where each member of the squad covers the blind spot of the other and thus advance in their search for the enemies. Afterwards people can chose whether they want to advance to the campaign, practice against the computer in skirmish matches or go online against other people around the world. This is a game which would be more suited to the gamers which favor brains and strategy over the standard gamers which know only how to react and rely on reflexes while gaming ... If you are of the first type - I recommend buying this, if you are from the latter one - prove us wrong, joins us and show us ! :)

Frozen Synapse is phenomenal. I bought a multipack ages ago, and remember eyeing it with great interest before release. Finally got around to playing it, and being turn based, it can suck the hours away.

One of the major hooks is that you can simulate the actions you think the enemy will take before you complete your turn. This allows you test a bunch of potential outcomes in advance, and it ratches the tension up tenfold.

There are loads of features built into the client: a chat service (communicate with your opponents without needing Friends list functionality), piles of multiplayer modes, a built in IRC client so you can discuss strategies or find new opponents... There's play-by-email functionality, hotseat (aka pass the keyboard) multiplayer, full coop for the campaign, and I don't think I've even mentioned the DLC yet!

Add all that goodness on top of one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard and a cyberpunk inflected premise and story, and you've got a winner. Immense value for the money. If you have any love for turn-based strategy, be sure to pick it up!

Okay, so I'm not much of a tactical person, but Frozen Synapse is a lot of fun. Planning out your exact next moves and seeing what the enemy could do in certain situations... and then the rush of seeing everything actually unfold....It really is a lot of fun. And it's really nice to listen to.

Frozen Synapse is a turn based game where the turns are simultaneous. You plan what you want your units to do in the next 5 seconds, and you and your enemy enact their plans at the same time. The graphics are simple, yet interesting, and the singleplayer campaign is quite detailed.

Pros:

- Turn based- Can run the plan of the current turn, and re-watch previous turns- Many modes- 25 dollars for a 2 pack- Simple, easy to use UI

Cons:

- Hard to master- High skill cap- Quite a few advanced techniques that are not mentioned- Simple graphics- Forced to buy 2 copies

I love it when a plan comes together, and Frozen Synapse is my favourite turn-based game.

It’s similar to ground operations of X-COM, for example, but in purer, simpler form. There’s no base management, inventory, RPG elements. All units of the same type have identical stats. And, unlike X-COM, RNG does not make much of an impact on outcomes of firefights, if any. The typical ‘chance to hit’ mechanic is replaced with ‘time to hit’. If enemy unit is in cover, your unit will need more time to hit him; if enemy units runs into your stationary unit, your unit will shoot first because he had a bonus to this timer, and the enemy had a penalty for running. Thus, if you can predict what your opponent is about to do, you can be 100% sure what will happen when they encounter one of your units. If.

In multiplayer FS becomes a game of psychology, misdirection, bluffs and double bluffs. You have to be able to make accurate predictions, but also behave unpredictably, be stealthy, feed misleading information to your foe. And make plans that account for every eventuality.

The maps are random and asymmetrical, but scoring takes this into account. Plus, you can use premade symmetrical maps or make your own. You can even play a flat version of cs_office if you’re so inclined.

There’s a long single player campaign with interesting missions and a cyberpunk-themed story. You can play it in coop, too. And it’s fairly hard. Only 0.6% of players have completed the campaign according to Steam achievement stats. But two of the missions at the end are somewhat glitchy and many people may have quit just because of these.

Downsides: I’m not too fond of the graphics. 3D perspective makes it hard to see whether you have line of sight sometimes, I would prefer to have a flat 2D mode. Thankfully, there’s a line of sight tool that works like a ruler. There’s no offline chat in multiplayer, which is disappointing for a game you can play via e-mail.

Red DLC adds shield units (really cool) and the ability to host coop games and play single-player campaign with a friend, among other things. You can use the new features in multiplayer even if your opponent/partner doesn’t have the DLC. So I’d get the Complete Pack while it’s on −88% sale.

-Quick Review-Frozen Synapse is a turn based strategy game where you utilize several different types of units to execute a variety of commands. Combat mechanics are based on: Direction, movement, cover, and weapon speed.-Detailed breakdown review-Story: I have yet to figure out what type of creature I am… in the campaign mode, I’m under the impression that I’m an artificial intelligence named “Tactics”, whoever had the bright idea of making me an AI apparently need to be shot in the foot, because I proceeded to fail the next ten attempts at the campaign.The campaign has a total of 55 missions, this game’s appeal is in its competitive aspect, think of this game as a “modern” chess game, although the objectives can be changed from simply “capture the king” to, capture the flag, team elimination, etc.

Game Play: There are five basic units in the game: Machine Gun, Shotgun, Sniper, Grenade Launcher, and Rocket Launcher. Each have different abilities, for example the shot gunner can run fast and does is the fastest at weapon draw, while the Sniper is slow to shoot, but can shoot from almost across the whole map and moves very slowly.As you get into the game the different units make more sense and you start to learn how to implement them accordingly. I practiced against the computer on campaign… which admittedly felt like bashing my face against a brick wall, but eventually strategies started to stick.

Achievements: There are 16 achievements for this game, one of those achievements requires beating a player named “bin” who is apparently no longer playing… Ergo, this achievement is broken in my book. The rest of the achievements are very straight forward and require either winning a game mode, or doing something specific in the game.The two hardest achievements are probably “get to level 100” and “Beat the campaign”. Hardest might be the wrong term though, maybe “the most time consuming”? Regardless, there is a fair amount of activity in this game if you’re going after achievements.

Price: Frozen Synapse commonly goes on steam sales, so that is when I would suggest purchasing the game, at the time that I’m writing this review the game is actually 88% off for the next 43 hours. At the standard price of $24.99 that’s probably too high of a price for a strategy game like Frozen Synapse for most people, you can easily pump 20-40 hours into the game… again; if you already know you like strategy games and enjoy learning new ones.

Conclusion: Again to recap: the story/campaign wasn’t particularly intersecting for me, the game play is very precise (a requirement for strategy games), achievements are “meh”, the price is high unless on sale.I’ve enjoyed playing this game, I would suggest it to people who *already know* they like strategy games. When you first jump into this game it’s definitely daunting to comprehend what’s going on. The game itself tries to help with a lack luster tutorial, but in the end it doesn’t prepare you for the cruel reality of “campaign”. (Unless you happen to be a young strategic genius, who in that case, go back to your business classes and leave my review alone.)

I like tactics games, but didn't think I would like this game, and so passed it over when I first saw it. I couldn't have been more wrong. My friend gifted me his bonus copy, and I have been playing it nonstop since. It seems like a sort of real time/turn based hybrid and can seem very intimidating at first, but at its core it really is just a turn based game that rewards careful planning. You give your soldiers orders that they then carry out over the course of a 5 second round, and you have a chance to revise the orders each round.

The controls seem complicated when you first start as well, but they are actually both remarkably simple and surprisingly powerful - you can give incredibly intricate orders to your troops with only a few clicks and drags. The asynchronys multiplayer lets you take pretty much all the time you need for your turn, and lets you juggle multiple games if your opponent does the same.

The soundtrack is pretty killer, too. If you're on the fence about this game and you like tactics games, you won't go wrong picking this up.

This game is one-of-a-kind. I love RTS, but there is something to be said about this game. At first glance, the game looks poorly made and of low quality. However, don't let the simple graphics fool you. This game is thoroughly enjoyable and offers indepth planning you wouldn't expect. You plan your turn the same time as the opponent and wait for the outcome. If you love strategy you have got to try this. You won't regret it.

I swear this may be one of the only darn games that you need to play the tutorial to understand how to play the game. But besides that, this game was and is excellent. I heard of this game from the PC Gamer magazine when it first came out. I won this game, I wouldn’t buy it. Over 20$ is too much for me (My opinion whtevr) Thanks to the 2014 holiday I was able to achieve this game I was looking forward to playing. It was exactly what I thought it would be.

The single player has an incredible story, filled with a unique world and interesting characters. The gameplay is quite unique, as you and your opponent input your commands at the same time to guide actions within 5 second increments. The interface however is clunky, and the multiplayer has a severe slippery slope effect in many modes, where losing even one unit can put you in too far a disadvantage to make a comeback.

The Red expansion adds more single player missions, a new unit type, more multiplayer modes, and most importantly allows you to play through the single-player campaign cooperatively.

This is a great game for the campaign (through singleplayer or coop), but fails as a reasonable multiplayer experience.

Ima write a review for this ♥♥♥♥♥ because none of my friends are MANLY enough to try it (not that a review will change anything). Frozen Synapse is a lot of things, but first and foremost is it's a turn based simulation game where you plot out your turn against an enemy who does the same, and the game runs the scenario each turn. That in itself opens up a broad range of gameplay opportunities which Frozen Synapse utilizes but sometimes not to their full potential. The tutorial covers is very comprehensive though you'll find there's a lot to remember and you might have to go back to it to brush up your skillz. The game has a story but honestly it might as well not have one just as easily, though it does have a cool premise so why not. All in all I think this games pretty fun and if it's ever below 10 bucks git it!